Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) Barr's opening statement to Congress has just been published—and we've learned more from it than expected, in part because Barr is so carefully dissembling he ends up revealing more than he intends. I analyze his words in this thread. I hope you'll read on and retweet.

1/ Barr concedes that Trump personally "weighs in" on criminal (or other active federal) cases that have a national security or foreign policy component. Trump's former NSA, John Bolton, says Trump's foreign policy and national security views are predicated on corrupt interests.

2/ So if Trump thinks a federal case has any national security or foreign policy implications, he "weighs in" with his *subordinate*, Barr—and Barr doesn't protest because, in Barr's words, he deems that "appropriate."

But Trump's interests in weighing in—per Bolton—are corrupt.

3/ Barr thus indicates we should expect Trump to have "weighed in"—again, with a subordinate—on every case touching on Recep Erdgoan's interests, Vladimir Putin's interests, Xi Jinping's interests, *or* Trump's *own* false allegations that Biden committed corrupt acts in Ukraine.

4/ Barr indicates that in such cases—i.e., where Trump is weighing in, per Bolton corruptly—Barr agrees with his boss that prosecutorial decisions must "necessarily involve considerations that transcend typical prosecutorial factors." In other words, Barr must act corruptly, too.

5/ So we see how the Trump-Barr partnership works: Trump hears from Erdogan that the Halkbank must be case settled; Trump "weighs in" with Barr; Barr agrees that other "considerations" besides the law must factor in; a corrupt result is achieved via this Trump-Barr collaboration.

6/ Barr doesn't just implicitly cop to this corrupt relationship in cases involving "foreign policy" and "national security"; he also says *any case in which a leak Trump doesn't like has occurred* or any politically sensitive police-brutality case is covered by this arrangement.

7/ Barr says that in the latter cases Trump calls to "confirm" that the DOJ is taking action—which means Trump calls Barr at a time he *doesn't know* what the DOJ is doing and then urges DOJ to take action. So the "weighing in" now takes on a somewhat more... *persuasive* cast.

8/ Barr tells Congress that "the handling of matter[s] and my decisions on criminal matters have been left to my independent judgment...without any direction or interference from the White House or anyone outside the Department."

Wow—he's saying so much less than he seems to be.

9/ Look at how *meager* his assurance to Congress is. Barr tells Congress Trump doesn't *order* him to do things and doesn't *stop* him from doing things he (Barr) wants to do—a meaningless assurance, given that Trump and Barr already work on these cases as common-cause partners.

10/ Trump doesn't *have* to order Barr to do things—and Barr doesn't do anything Trump doesn't want him to do—so there's no cause for Trump to try to stop him from any action he (Barr) wants to take.

Barr's are empty words that thinly cloak a manifestly corruption DOJ operation.

11/ Barr testifies he "had no prior relationship with Trump" when hired. Yes and no. He was longtime pals with 3 Trump lawyers—Giuliani, diGenova, and Toensing—and had sent the White House a memo so fawningly pro-Trump it served as (and was clearly intended as) a job application.

12/ Barr echoes an old Dershowitz lie: "[Pre-hire] I became deeply troubled by what I perceived as the increasing use of the criminal justice process as a political weapon." No—Barr's OK with the use of the criminal justice system as a weapon. As long as it's against his enemies.

13/ My book Proof of Corruption, and the *real* Ukraine investigation—which will come once America has a DOJ that isn't corrupt—will establish that Barr has done more to use the criminal justice system as a weapon than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover. It's obscene he says otherwise.

14/ Staggeringly, Barr concedes that he came to the DOJ with an *agenda*: to "steer her back to her core mission of applying one standard of justice" after a period in which he felt—from the outside looking in—that federal law enforcement was being used as a weapon against Trump.

15/ Ponder the hubris of this: Barr, outside government, with *no visibility* into the Mueller Report or the truth of the Trump-Russia case, *decided*—on what evidence?—that the whole affair was cruelly unjust to Trump, and that he had to take over DOJ to help Trump get justice.

16/ In other words, Barr cops to *pre-judging* the Trump-Russia investigation as wrongful *before* he took over DOJ and had *any* insight into what the investigation entailed or would find.

It's a stunning admission that's so blandly stated that many will miss how corrupt it is.

17/ Barr also tells Congress he knew *before he took the job* that Trump would give him "independence." What conversations with—say—Trump's lawyers created *that* farcical pre-hire wink-wink nudge-nudge? All Barr would've heard of in the news was Trump's "loyalty oath" for Comey.

18/ In short, Bill Barr is telling a story of how he was hired, why he was hired, why he wanted to be hired, and the relationship he established with Trump once he was hired that is—in a word—scandalous. But either Barr doesn't realize how scandalous it is or simply doesn't care.

19/ Barr makes clear the civil rights era—for him—ended in the 60s. He falsely says that—by the end of the 60s—America had "succeeded" in destroying the Jim Crow era and our laws "embodied the guarantee of equal protection." That is, post-1969, Black people needed to settle down.

20/ Barr admits work remains to "reform our institutions to ensure they better conform to our laws and aspirations." But note "ensure"—it's just a checkup, a top-up, on something we're already doing right—and "better," i.e. our institutions *already* "conform" to our aspirations.

21/ Barr's understanding of civil rights doesn't admit the possibility we *didn't* "tear down" Jim Crow completely, our laws still *don't* "embody" our principles, some institutions *are* terminally *broken*—and don't merely need to be briefly checked up on like naughty children.

22/ Barr, in calling anti-police-brutality efforts "successful," is like a man stabbing you in the chest who says you're lucky—he could be cutting your head off. Who cares if things are better in 2020 than 1960? How long should *anyone* wait for things to be *great*—not "better"?

23/ All the hard data on the criminal justice system's operations *disputes* Barr's claims. Black Americans are disproportionately mistreated by the system at *every* point of encounter between police and civilians. Cherry-picked numbers can't hide *disparate relative treatment*.

24/ To his (very limited) credit, Barr concedes that Black Americans' concerns about disparate treatment are "legitimate"—though before you run out for Kleenex, remember that Barr's facing a veritable *tsunami* of data *forcing* him to concede such a blindingly obvious hard fact.

25/ But Barr then creates a straw man, accusing #BlackLivesMatter of insisting that the *only* basis for disparate treatment of citizens by race is "deep-seated racism infecting our police departments." In fact, activists *agree* "the problem stems from a complex mix of factors."

26/ Barr can't deny there are still racists in police departments. He can't deny "deep-seated racism" affects *training procedures*, *internal culture*, and *received protocols* as much as it does certain cops. So it's not clear *what* he disagrees with #BlackLivesMatter on here.

27/ Barr says "we all must strive not to reduce each other to stereotypes"—but when he sees large numbers of Black Americans marching in peaceful protest, he calls them a "mob," thereby perpetuating the *exact* same Selma-style "deep-seated racism" he says America has extirpated.

28/ Here's the part of his opening statement where Bill Barr takes out what must surely be the smallest violin in America, whining that if anyone in America uses the slogan "ACAB" (which has been around, and rare, for decades) or demonizes the police, *that's* the real atrocity.

29/ I've counted cops among my friends. I have soldiers in my family. I admire the hard work of policing and soldiering. But cops and soldiers have been criticized for decades; I don't believe there's more *criticism* now, it's just more *public*. The complaints are always there.

30/ Yes—"ACAB" is "unfair." And maybe 10% of Democrats want to *fully* defund all police, a view I consider—even having seen from inside the system how broken it is—wholly reckless. But taking fringe slogans or views and making them a cause celebre is mere political propaganda.

31/ The things people often say (and publicly!) about public education—or politicians, or lawyers, or doctors, or insurance companies, or the rich, or pro athletes—are pretty damn cutting. Criticism comes with being alive. I don't know why *this* criticism is somehow *different*.

32/ Barr has—let's be *very* clear—*zero* hard data to support his claim that *this* criticism, after decades of similar criticism, is causing "crime rates [to] soar." Honestly, that sort of FNC rhetoric is downright *embarrassing*, coming from an actual law enforcement official.

33/ Here's what *is* happening: officers have been poorly trained. Categorically and across the board. Now the way many cops were trained to act is *rightly* coming under fire. So cops *do* become risk-averse. Whose fault is that? *The people who mis-trained them*. Not *critics*.

34/ Barr's opening statement to Congress blames the *victims* of police misconduct and mistraining rather than the law enforcement officials who set training protocols. And that's convenient because (mirabile dictu!) Barr *is just such an official*. He's exculpating himself here.

35/ I want everyone to note tomorrow how Barr pulls a switcheroo, saying the protests are causing rising crime—by which he presumably means protest-related property crimes—but then, suddenly, the crime he's talking about is... gang violence? So BLM causes... more *gang violence*?

36/ In other words, Barr tells Congress—and America—in his opening statement that protesting police brutality...

...kills Black people.

There's *no other way* to read his statement than that that is the verbal and moral atrocity he's slowly lumbering toward, like a 1950s bigot.

37/ Barr saves his worst for last. In fact, his comments about the ongoing protests are so offensive I want to start my brief discussion of them by posting the excerpt from Proof of Corruption on the #BlackLivesMatter protests that Macmillan has published: read.macmillan.com/lp/proof-of-co…

38/ Barr says federal agents in Portland are *only* "inside the courthouse." That's a lie; they're outside the courthouse and in roving patrols far away from federal property. Barr also says, contra FBI data, that the protests after George Floyd's death have been notably violent.

39/ If Barr considers 100 annual cop-on-Black-American killings a rare event, why does he pretend that a much, much smaller number of "innocent [violent crime] victims" of the protests is a national rampage? How many victims does he claim there are? And victims of *whom* exactly?

40/ Proof of Corruption details how much of the violence occasionally connected to the protests has been committed by... well, cops and right-wingers. Many of whom have been arrested. Who are the violent-crime—not property-crime—victims of left-wing activists? How many are there?

CONCLUSION/ I don't disagree that Portland has gotten ugly—a small group is indeed trying to wage violent struggle with the feds. But what does *that* have to do with *thousands* of BLM protests? Why does Barr focus on *Portland*? To distract from his and Trump's corruption. /end

OPENING STATEMENT/ I tweeted this out right before I began this thread about it, but here's the link (again) to Barr's opening statement: politico.com/f/?id=00000173…